


i just saw the lightning strike

by kathillards



Series: ad infinitum [9]
Category: Power Rangers Samurai
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Childhood Friends, Growing Up Together, Multi, Not Chosen Ones AU, implied eventual ot6
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-27
Updated: 2019-06-27
Packaged: 2020-05-20 15:18:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19379353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kathillards/pseuds/kathillards
Summary: In which the team doesn't get to be power rangers, but they fall in love just the same.





	i just saw the lightning strike

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mcmeekin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mcmeekin/gifts).



> you ask for lame and mushy and i shall deliver :)  
> pov jumps around between all of them. some parts aren't linear but it should still be clear when they take place based on ages and such, hopefully.  
> title credits to the brothers of jonas & much thanks to them for inventing soulmate aus with 'strangers'.

He thinks he’d like to play the guitar.

Of course, there’s not a lot of time for that. Most days are a whorl of training and writing and routines on routines. Mentor Jii tells him all the time how important it is that he learn to defend himself, just in case the unthinkable happens. He follows Lauren around every hour of the day, hoping she’ll take pity on him and let him join her for her special samurai training.

Sometimes she does. But sometimes, her mentor will scowl him out of the room until he finds himself sitting outside on the front doorstep, playing with Lauren’s lion zord, waiting for a miracle.

Antonio shows up when he’s seven, and then when he’s seventeen. For longer than he’d care to admit, Jayden had nurtured the memory of him as his miracle, and so when his face pops up over the gate of the Shiba house, it’s like the sky has cracked open to a sunshine flood.

“Wow, this place has not changed at all,” Antonio says with a low whistle. He tugs his suitcase and fishing equipment behind him as Jayden stands, knees unsteady, unsure if he’s really seeing his best friend right now.

“What’s the matter?” Antonio asks, finally at the doorstep. “You don’t recognize me?”

“I—I thought you moved,” Jayden stammers.

Antonio’s grin is wider and brighter than the sun. “I did. And I moved back. Wanted to make sure you hadn’t died in the—” He lowers his voice conspiratorially. “— _Nightlock_ attacks, right?”

“It’s Nighlock,” is the only sentence Jayden manages to form.

Antonio huffs out a laugh and then nearly pounces on him for a hug. “You haven’t changed a bit, have you?”

 

 

 

“Can I go too? Please please please—”

Her mother heaves a weary sigh. “Ask your sister.”

Emily switches her gaze to Serena in an instant.

“Okay, but only if you behave yourself,” says Serena sternly. “And only for the weekend. I have to stay, and you have to come back to the farm to help Mom and Dad.”

Emily nods eagerly. “I just wanna see the Shiba house. Is it really as big as Mom says?”

“Guess we’ll find out,” says Serena with a laugh, ruffling her sister’s hair. “Come on, squirt. Time to go meet some samurai.”

Emily is seven when she visits the Shiba house for the first time, and she only remembers three things distinctly from that visit: the maze of hallways in the house, each one wooden and tiled and leading somewhere different every time she stepped foot in one, the beautiful little garden out back where Serena sat with her and gave Emily her flute to take home, and the quiet boy with somber eyes who followed the red ranger around all day.

“I’m Emily,” she tells him, sticking out her hand.

“This is Jayden,” says Lauren, patting her little brother on the shoulder. “Where are your manners, Jayden?”

He’s looking at her like he’s afraid to be curious. “Hi, I’m Jayden,” he parrots. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“You two are around the same age, right?” Serena nudges her sister forward. “Why don’t you go play in the backyard. Lauren, when are the others coming?”

The future red and yellow rangers gravitate towards the samurai meeting room while Emily and Jayden stand there in the foyer, each staring and trying to assess the other in the manner that seven- and nine-year-olds best could.

“Do you want to play hide and seek?” Emily suggests.

Jayden blinks at her. “I don’t know how to play that…”

Emily gasps. “How do you not know hide and seek?”

This is how she gets lost in the hallways of the Shiba house, but she makes sure to play hide and seek with Jayden Shiba every time she goes to visit, just to make sure he hasn’t forgotten since the last time she was there.

 

 

 

He has one goal: to find out who stole his special edition, autographed Michael Phelps card that he had brought here to show Jayden and only _show_ him.

He wasn’t even going to let him touch it and now it’s _missing_.

At age seven, this is not Kevin’s first trip to Shiba house, so he stalks down the manor hallways with a purpose. Jayden had claimed he had no idea what happened to the card, and he was a Shiba, so his word could be trusted. (Privately, Kevin thought, Jayden would never even know how to lie in the first place.)

That doesn’t leave many culprits. There are, of course, the rangers in training, but what would they want with a card? His big sister Eleanor and the others are busy working on their symbol power, too busy to bother with what he and Jayden are doing. Mentor Jii, of course, is with the power rangers, so…

He hears a muffled giggle and rounds the corner and finds—

“Oh, dude,” says Mike, looking up. “Is this yours?”

Kevin narrows his eyes. Mike’s older brother, Matthew, is the future green ranger, and he’s as calm, collected, and cool as a cucumber.

Mike, on the other hand, is not.

Kevin tries to only ask his father to let him visit the Shiba house on weekends where he’s _almost_ certain Mike won’t be there.

Next to him, Jayden’s best friend Antonio is lying on the couch in the den room, his legs sprawled over the edge. He goes cross-eyed and grins at Kevin in hello.

“Give it back,” Kevin demands.

“Or what?”

“Or I’ll symbol power you into a tree!”

“Nice try, but you don’t have your symbol power brush!”

“Guys, guys,” Antonio interrupts loudly. “Mike, it’s just a card.” To Kevin, he says, “We’ll let you have it if you and Jayden play video games with us.”

Kevin wrinkles his nose. Video games were a waste of time.

But… Mike waves his card at him tauntingly. Michael Phelps’ autograph glimmers in the low den light.

Kevin huffs. “Fine. I’ll go get Jayden. If you do _anything_ to that card, I’ll—I’ll—I’ll tell Matthew!”

This makes Mike pale. There’s nothing he likes less than a lecture from his big brother. Kevin smiles smugly at him and then whirls to go find Jayden and drag him into wasting the afternoon playing a bunch of stupid video games with Mike and Antonio.

 

 

 

She plops the box of cookies she’d baked last night down on the kitchen counter and beams over at Jayden. “I brought cookies!”

Somehow, Jayden does not look entirely thrilled. “Thanks, Mia. We, uh, we have extra guests so… I’ll save some for them.”

“Really?” Mia looks around at the quiet entryway of the Shiba house. “Who are the extra guests?”

“I don’t know if you’ve met them,” Jayden explains, starting to lead the way down into the hallways and out towards the back garden. He seems a lot less solemn this time—the last time Mia had visited with Terry, it had been two years ago when she and Jayden were both twelve and nothing had seemed to cheer him up, not even her special samurai-shaped cookies.

“Lauren and her team are in the training room, so we have to be out here,” Jayden continues. He slides open the glass door. “You know Kevin, right? And that’s Matthew’s little brother Mike and Serena’s little sister Emily.”

Mike glances up from his handheld video game player once to shoot her a smile. Kevin waves hello. And Emily bounces up to her, a flute clutched in her hands.

“Oh, you’re Terry’s sister!” she says, sticking out her hand for Mia to shake. “I thought it was so cool the pink ranger is a boy. Did you wanna be pink ranger? I think I’d wanna be green, if I could be a ranger—”

“But your family color is yellow,” Mike interrupts, wrinkling his nose in confusion.

Emily turns to look at him. “So what?” she demands with all eleven years of indignation. “I’m just speaking hypomathetically.”

“Hypothetically,” corrects Kevin.

Mia giggles. “If _I_ were a ranger, I’d want to be red. Like Lauren.”

Emily brightens. “Lauren’s great. Isn’t it cool that the future red ranger is a girl? When has that happened before?”

“1969,” Kevin says.

“But it’s been a while,” Jayden adds.

Emily beams at Mia. “One day,” she says confidently, “I bet we’ll have a _whole team_ of girls only. No boys allowed!”

 

 

 

Mike kicks at a rock outside the front door of the Shiba house. He knows he’s sulking, and he knows that Matthew’s gonna tell him to stop being a baby, but he can’t help it. He had been _so close_ to beating his high score and now he had to be _here_.

He hates the Shiba house sometimes. Most of the time. Mostly when he thinks about how Matthew spends all his time here, instead of at home, where he _should_ be. And when his parents send him over here so he’ll stop playing video games.

The door opens, but it’s not Jayden behind it.

Emily blinks at him. “Mike? I didn’t know you were coming.”

Mike tries not to grimace. Emily is nice and all, but she’s only thirteen, which is two whole years younger, and she always smells like the farm. And she doesn’t _get it_ when he talks about video games or high school or skateboarding with Kevin and Jayden.

“It was kind of last minute,” he mumbles, squeezing past her. “Is Jayden home?”

“He’s in training,” Emily informs him. “The rangers are out today on a mission to check the Bull Zord so he’s working with Jii. But we have snacks! And Mia said she might be coming over later today.”

“Oh,” Mike says glumly.

Emily looks at him in concern. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, it’s fine,” lies Mike. “I’m not allowed to use the PlayStation when Jayden isn’t there.”

“We can still have fun,” Emily assures him. “Do you want to go to the backyard and practice our symbol power?”

Mike glances at her, incredulous. “Why would you want to _practice_ on a _weekend_?” Jayden, he knows, is always in training mode, but even Emily?

She shrugs. “It’s important, isn’t it? We never know when we might have to use it. And it’s fun and I can make flowers now, wanna see?”

Curious despite himself, Mike follows her out to the backyard. “But the only time we’ll ever need to use symbol power is if we get attacked by Nighlocks, and there are none. Or if something happens to the rangers.”

Emily shivers. “Don’t even say that. Serena got sick a while ago and everyone was so worried… but she got better, thank goodness.”

Mike looks at her in surprise. That bit of Samurai family gossip must have been hidden from him. “I didn’t know that. Were they going to send you instead?”

Emily steps out into the warm summer sunshine and then frowns at him. “Mom and Dad were talking about it… but that would be so weird! I don’t know if I could train with Lauren and Matthew and all the others… they’re so much older and they’re so good already…”

Mike nods, his mind wandering to thoughts of what he would do if he had to replace his older brother on the ranger team. He can’t deny he’s entertained the daydreams of it—wanting to be a power ranger, to wear the green suit, to wield the family weapons. To actually be _good_ at symbol power rather than just ‘okay’.

“…and they’re a really good team,” Emily is finishing up when he tunes back into whatever she’s saying. “All five of them together… but I bet we’d be pretty good together, too.”

Mike looks at her. “We?”

“Yeah.” Emily smiles at him. “If it was the five of us instead—you, me, Jayden, Kevin, Mia. We’re next in line, right?”

“Yeah…” Mike says slowly, turning the idea over in his mind. He’s thought about becoming the green ranger, but he realizes now he’d never given much thought to his team. “I think we’d be alright.”

 

 

 

His sister is lying deathly cold in the bed and if Jii tells him to go to sleep one more time, Jayden is going to _snap_.

The door to her room creaks open.

“Go _away_ —” Jayden begins, his voice a harsh whisper, but it’s not Jii who looks in, or even one of the other rangers, but Mia.

“Jayden,” she says softly. “Can you come out for a second? It’s the others, they’re calling you.”

Jayden stares. “The others? The others who?”

“Me, Mike, Emily, Kevin,” Mia lists off, holding up her fingers. Her gaze travels to Lauren and he can see the lines of worry etched in her forehead. “They all came over after that last attack. The rangers aren’t here, it’s just us.”

“Oh.” Feeling a little befuddled, he lets her lead him out of Lauren’s room and into one of the neighboring guest bedrooms, where the other three are gathered on the floor, playing a quiet game of cards.

Emily’s face lights up when she sees him. “Oh, good, you’re here. How is she?”

“I don’t know,” Jayden admits in a small voice, as Mia pushes him down to sit cross-legged on the ground in between Kevin and Emily. “She’s so cold and she won’t wake up… but Jii says she’ll be okay, and the rangers are working on it, but…”

“But you wish you could do something?” Kevin finishes in sympathy. “Remember last month when Eleanor got injured trying to get that swordfish zord?”

“And when Matt tried to use the beetle disc and it rebounded and hurt him?” Mike shakes his head. “I know it sucks, but they’ve gotten out of all the other situations, right?”

Mia sits down next to Mike and smiles at Jayden across their little circle. “They’re the power rangers. Just have some faith. They’d never let anything happen to Lauren. She’s their leader.”

“I _do_ have faith,” Jayden protests, staring numbly at Emily’s cards as she fans them out. “It just… it sucks being forced to stay at home all the time and not be able to help. You guys can at least… go outside. And do things.”

“Why don’t they let you go out?” Emily asks, brow furrowed.

“Because if the Nighlocks found out there was another Shiba child, they’d go after him,” says Kevin grimly. “They know if they can steal him or brainwash him, he can undo any Shiba family symbol power that Lauren has.”

Emily purses her lips in thought. “What if… they _didn’t_ know he was a Shiba? Then could he go outside?”

“We all have samurai magic on us, the Nighlocks would sniff him out ten miles away,” explains Mia sadly.

“Unless we used Mike’s body spray,” Kevin says with a smirk.

Mike narrows his eyes at him.

“That’s a good idea, though,” Emily says quickly, before a fight can break out. “We cover up Jayden with a different smell, put a hat and sunglasses on him… and Nighlock are stupid! If they get confused, they’ll leave. That’s what Serena says.”

“It’s too much of a security risk,” Kevin argues.

“But it’s not good for him to stay holed up all the time,” Mia agrees. “Even if we just went to the amusement park.”

Jayden stares around the circle with wide eyes. “Are you guys seriously talking about _sneaking out_? With Jii around?”

“Oh, Jii’s easy,” says Mike dismissively. “I’ll steal his motorcycle to distract him.”

“But there are wards on the house,” Kevin points out.

“If we’re fast enough, we’ll get away before Jii can catch us,” says Emily. She claps her hands and smiles at Jayden. “What do you think? Amusement park date?”

“How is it a date if there’s five of us?” Mike protests.

“How is it not a date?” Emily demands.

For the first time since they’d brought his sister home from the battle, Jayden finds himself smiling.

 

 

 

“So, tell me about them,” says Antonio, lying stretched out on the grass and looking up at the stars as they start to flicker into the sky. “These friends of yours.”

Jayden arranges himself neatly—never so graceless as him, Antonio notices with a fond sigh—next to him. “They’re not really… well. We just kinda grew up together because our brothers and sisters were the next power rangers team.”

“So you’re sort of like, a back-up power rangers team.”

Jayden snorts. “I guess so. I mean, if anything happened… but nothing’s happened yet. And they’ve been fighting the Nighlock for a year.”

Antonio turns over on his side to watch Jayden as he loses himself in thought, his eyes going faraway. In the quiet hum of the garden at night, he almost looks peaceful—and Jayden _always_ looks troubled, he remembers, even as a child.

“It’s just me, Kevin, Mike, Emily, and Mia,” Jayden continues, his voice growing softer. “At first, it was just me and Kevin. After you left, I mean. He came over a _lot_ because his sister’s crazy into training and so is he, so he would always come over and just watch them practice symbol power or read books. It was kind of annoying at first… but he’s really nice once you get to know him.”

“What, like you didn’t spend every day following Lauren around and practicing Symbol power?” Antonio nudges him in the side and Jayden laughs. “Sounds like two nerds in a pod.”

“I wasn’t that bad!” Jayden says defensively. “Kevin’s _strict_. He wakes up every morning for a run at exactly the same time, even when we’re having a sleepover. He’s trying to go to the Olympics soon, for swimming, so he has to be really dedicated.”

Antonio crinkles his forehead in thought. “He can go to the Olympics? I thought you Samurai folks had to devote yourselves to training forever or something.”

Jayden shoots him a look. “Not _forever_. And we’re not the future rangers, so we’re allowed to do things. I mean, not me… ‘cause Lauren’s right in the line of fire because of our family’s Symbol power and if anything happened to her… that power would go to me. But the others can do stuff. Like Mike, he’s an arcade champion.”

“A video gamer?” Antonio grins. “I’d like to meet him. We could compare high scores.”

Jayden rolls his eyes. “And spend hours stealing _my_ PlayStation to play video games?”

“Oh, come on, it’s not like _you_ ever use it.”

“It’s the principle of the matter!”

“Whatever.” Antonio laughs and stretches his arms out. “Who are the others? You said there were two girls?”

“Mmhmm.” Jayden turns his gaze back to the stars, looking a little more slumped down as though the tension has deflated out of his body. He always used to carry himself so high and determined, all those years ago. Even still today. “Emily and Mia. They’re pretty cool. Mia likes to cook but she’s not very good, but she’s really great at pretty much everything else she does. Emily works on the farm so she always kinda smells like chickens? But not in a bad way. We need her to stop Kevin and Mike from killing each other sometimes.”

Antonio smiles and reaches over to interlace his fingers with Jayden’s. To his surprise—he’d been so touch-shy as a kid—Jayden squeezes his hand.

“I can’t wait to meet them,” he murmurs.

Jayden smiles back. “I can’t wait for you to meet them. You’re gonna love them.”


End file.
